


Salut des armes

by redonthefly



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Drabble, Fencing, Gen, Girls With Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 04:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2414498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna learns how to fence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salut des armes

They’re big men, tall and broad shouldered, standing proud and stoic along the palace walls and gates, their hats tilted against the sun and the tassels on their uniforms golden and soft. 

Anna is not afraid of them, though she knows Elsa is; she sees how she shies away from them when they walk past, hiding her face in Papa’s pants leg. They’re both a little older now, of course, but Elsa still walks a little faster, like she can’t wait to get inside and the shelter of the cool stone.

Some days, especially in the summer when everyone becomes just a little more pliant and mellow under the afternoon sun, Anna will come and sit with her back to the wall and her face to the sky, the blocks of slate warm under her skirts. 

The guards don’t ever seem to mind her there; they don’t ever say anything unless she speaks to them first, and even then they mostly just nod or murmur “yes ma’am” or “yes, your ladyship” like she’s grown up and regal like her mother.

When she is around ten, she wanders outside and stumbles across a group of them working through a series of exercises with blunted rapiers; they step together, wave the glinting steel in long arcs, hands and feet moving smoothly from one set to the next, ending with a long thrust and the stomp of boots.

She runs to the gardens so quickly that she trips, tears her hose and doesn’t stop, single-minded until she’s returned with an approximately sized stick. The guards are gone, but she knows they’ll be back again sometime, and so sets to practicing: imagining herself drawing her foil on horseback, armor and helm and the flag beside.

*

At ten, no one can say that Anna has the delicacy and diplomatic skills to cajole the castle guard into giving her fencing lessons.

They  _can_  speak to her persistence.

The first time Tomas and Kristian let her hold their foils -  _just, just HOLD it Anna, don’t swing it_ \- it feels alive in her hands, like all the possibility in her imagination might come true. She closes her eyes, shifting the hilt from one hand to the other, testing the weight of it, feeling the tension burn in her shoulders. 

The first time she’s allowed to hoist one aloft, her whole body sings. The practice foils are slightly heavier than the ones that hang smoothly from the belt holsters of the active guards but they are no less beautiful, and the heft and momentum of the blade feels to her like a crescendo as she feints and parries. 

Anna is ten, then eleven, and finally twelve before her mother and father cotton on to her informal lessons - like the baking, like the foreign languages, like the chemistry - and pull her away with blusters and tsk-ing about the crop of freckles that have spread across her nose, the broad set of her shoulders, with their fledgling muscle and promise of strength. 

She never forgets the dance however, even if it means practicing the movements empty handed and by moonlight, under the safe and watchful eye of Joan of Arc.

**Author's Note:**

> Contains a bald Dealing With Dragons reference, if you squint.


End file.
